Gloomy Monday sees businesses forfeit $50m-plus

Electrical inspector Charlie Shepherd enters the Rialto Mall on Broadway during the power cut. Picture / Richard Robinson

Malls closed, office towers were evacuated and meat pies went cold in what one business leader estimated was a $50 million-plus bill in lost trade and productivity from yesterday's power blackout.

Employers and Manufacturers Association (Northern) chief Alasdair Thompson said the cost was based on much of Auckland losing half a day from its annual $39 billion gross domestic product.

This figure was backed up by Newmarket Business Association chief executive Cameron Brewer, who said 95 per cent of the 400 retail outlets had shut up shop and gone home by mid-morning, leaving a group of students who set up a sausage sizzle on Broadway cashing in on the shortage of food outlets.

"You could fire a gun down Broadway. It's abandoned," he said.

Further down the Southern Motorway, the owners of the new mega-shopping centre at Sylvia Park closed the doors, a day after traffic jams forced them to tell customers - "don't come". Only Foodtown, with a back-up generator, stayed open while power was out.

Heart of the City chief executive Alex Swney said the central city's 1500 retailers, with an annual turnover of $1.3 billion, had basically lost a day's sales after the university shut its doors and large parts of corporate Auckland sent staff home.

"Rather than try and second-guess the cost in dollars and cents, the big picture is what has it done for Auckland's reputation as a first-world city?" he said. "Are we heading for Sydney or Suva?"

Many of the city's office towers had limited or no back-up power generation, forcing thousands of workers to pack their bags and weave their way home through 300 blank sets of traffic lights.

The 29-storey ASB Tower on Wyndham St was evacuated about 11am after the emergency power generator failed. Power came and went from 8.30am. Building staff evacuated the tower floor-by-floor using torches because emergency lights in the stairwells were not working.

ASB spokeswoman Linley Wood said about 400 staff over 11 floors were safely evacuated from the bank's head office. Some moved to other buildings, others went home. The trading floor was out briefly but transactions transferred to another office in Albany.

"It was a good business continuity test," Linley Wood said.

Queen St was a stretch of darkened doorways as shopkeepers simply closed their doors, unable to trade without Eftpos, tills or fridges.

"It's a miserable morning," said Divan Cafe manager Ozmen MacPherson. "Everyone wants their coffee."

Shirley Taylor, owner of the Robert Harris coffee shop at the Bank of New Zealand Tower, had to put food in a chiller and hope it stayed within the temperature guidelines until the power came back on in the afternoon. It did.

Not far away in Ponsonby, cafes shut up shop and it was hard to find a coffee. A mobile coffee van in Williamson Ave did a roaring trade.

Paymark Eftpos spokesman Darryl Roots said the Eftpos system stayed up during the blackout.

However, businesses without power were unable to use the system and for about an hour during the morning the number of transactions nationwide dropped from the normal 35 a second to 18.

New Zealand Steel at Glenbrook, one of the biggest users of electricity in the region, was unaffected by the blackout. The steel mill generates about 60 per cent of its electricity through a co-generation plan.

- Additional reporting by Anne Beston, Karen Tay